'Shining' Loses Its Luster Over 6 Hours

TELEVISION - Television review

The Cumbersome Miniseries Based On Stephen King's Thriller May Not Give You A Scare, But It Will Almost Certainly Wear You Out.

April 27, 1997|By Hal Boedeker, Sentinel Television Critic

Checkout time at the Overlook Hotel is 11 p.m. Thursday. Before signing the guest register, a few warnings about the accommodations: Doors open and close on their own. A fire hose slithers like a snake. The animal-shaped topiaries spring to life. The boiler could blow. And stay away from Room 217. (Yeah, sure you will.)

For such a ritzy inn, so many problems!

At six hours, Stephen King's 'The Shining' gives you exorbitant time to study the lavish setting. (The miniseries was filmed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo.) Check-in time is 9 tonight on ABC (WFTV-Channel 9 locally), and the pun-ishing visit continues at 9 p.m. Monday and Thursday.

There's too much haunted hotel in this ghost story. There's too much everything. King's millions of fans probably won't mind. They've turned It, The Tommyknockers and The Stand into ratings bonanzas for ABC.

But the running time unwisely inflates this intimate story of a three-member family coming apart at the isolated hotel in the Colorado Rockies. The Stand was an epic. The Shining is not.

Six hours is just fine for ABC, which needs something big to throw against NBC's Thursday lineup. Take that, ER.

The extreme length, however, leads to tiresome repetition. Horror and suspense are better served in small helpings. Even Alfred Hitchcock would have been daunted by these conditions.

Director Stanley Kubrick turned King's 1977 novel into a slow-moving 1980 film, enlivened by Jack Nicholson's scenery-chewing. King despised Kubrick's revisions to the plot and had the clout to do this more faithful $23 million remake.

The Shining has personal meaning for King, whose father abandoned the family. In the press kit, King talks about writing the novel when he was a young father.

''I was adjusting to the idea that not all my emotions about my children were the ones I had come in contact with on Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet - all those shows of my childhood which were what I knew of the nuclear family, since I didn't grow up in one myself,'' he says.

For television, King adapts his novel, makes a cameo and serves as executive producer. Mick Garris of The Stand directs.

Unlike Kubrick, King concentrates on family and plays up the inner conflicts of Jack Torrance (Steven Weber of Wings in the Nicholson role). Jack becomes off-season caretaker at the Overlook Hotel and moves there with concerned wife Wendy (Rebecca De Mornay) and precocious, 7-year-old son Danny (Courtland Mead).

The job is a last resort for the stressed Jack, a recovering alcoholic who once lashed out at his son and broke the boy's arm. Life proves no easier in the remote inn. Jack obsesses over the hotel's grim past while fighting his demons and the Overlook's ghosts.

The aggressive spirits want Danny, who has ''the shining,'' psychic abilities that allow him to communicate with others without talking. Jack calls his son ''little Kreskin'' for good reason. The boy also talks to Tony (Wil Horneff), a friend only he can see, and has disturbing visions.

''We have to get out of here,'' Danny warns his parents. ''This place is bad!''

King tells the story more clearly and establishes the characters better than Kubrick did. Yet the first four hours - except for a visit to Room 217 - amount to a slow buildup to the finale, with its harrowing showdown between Wendy and Jack, who wields a croquet mallet. (The violent miniseries carries a well-deserved TV-14 that marks its unsuitability for young viewers.)

The Kubrick version is more visually stunning. The miniseries drops the famous scene of Nicholson breaking down a door with an ax and sneering, ''Here's Johnny!''

But the ABC version supplies the startling effect of the animal-shaped shrubs coming to life, and King's version is better acted. The surprisingly effective Weber gives a richer performance than Nicholson, who went over the edge quickly and hammed it up mercilessly.

The Wings star excels at depicting the despair, cynicism and inner conflict of aspirin-chewing Jack. With bite, Weber delivers lines like ''Women - can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em.''

Nicholson and Shelley Duvall had no chemistry as spouses. No such problem for Weber and the increasingly distraught De Mornay.

In another casting coup, little Mead is a toothy, chipmunk-cheeked child who seems like a male Shirley Temple. A fine actor, he could get on some parents' nerves.

King and Co. do many things right, but the results are still disappointing. Flashbacks pad the plot. The second night cliffhanger comes to nothing. The story turns sentimental. Too many doors open and close on their own. The eerie music works overtime. Commercial interruptions won't help.

The six hours do, unfortunately, give you ample time to think about the depressing plot, which puts a child in jeopardy and plays marital strife for violent thrills.

Ultimately, The Shining illustrates the hypocrisy over the TV violence issue. Many people decry violence and its effect on children. But Disney-owned ABC has given King a lot of latitude on this intense, well-hyped project. And ABC will probably enjoy huge ratings.

The producers have grand visions for their epic. ''Within the context of a good old-fashioned ghost story, we have a very serious examination of domestic violence,'' producer Mark Carliner told The Los Angeles Times. Uh, no way.

In the press kit, King says he hopes The Shining will be ''the scariest thing that's ever been on American television.'' Sorry, Stephen. It's one of the more exhausting things.

ABC has devoted too many fright nights to the Overlook Hotel. Better reconsider your reservations before stepping into this haunted inn.